Bright Horizons Haydon Hall Montessori Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

All children thrive under the care of the highly experienced and qualified staff team at this child-centred nursery. Children and their parents receive an extremely warm welcome by leaders and staff into the nursery. Staff have very high expectations for children's behaviour. Children settle exceptionally well and form excellent bonds with staff. All staff ensure that the settling-in process provides reassurance and emotional security for children and their parents. For example, staff initially replicate children's feeding and sleeping routines from home. This ensures that children quickly feel safe and at home in the nursery. Children develop the confidence to play and explore.

Children develop a love of learning as a direct result of the staff, curriculum and learning environment. The focus on children's communication and language skills provides a central theme from which all other areas of children's learning are derived. Staff are excellent role models for communication and language. Babies hear lots of sounds, words and early language. Children throughout the nursery thoroughly enjoy being sung to and singing with staff. Pre-school children eagerly use wooden sticks to replicate the rhythm of a song during an activity. Staff extend these interests with children.

Staff introduce and encourage children to explore a wide selection of exciting books. Staff use stories as an opportunity to spark children's imaginations and learn new vocabulary. They use props, exaggerated voices and expressive facial expressions. Staff pause and wait for children to fill in the gaps of the story. They use sign language consistently, and even the youngest children begin to use this. For example, older babies make the sign for 'more' and 'finish'. Children express their opinions and ideas freely and with confidence. They use new vocabulary fluently through speaking and using signs. Children develop a vast array of skills that prepare them extremely well for the next stage of their learning, such as starting school.

What does the early years setting do well and what does it need to do better?

• The curriculum is ambitious for all children and covers all areas of learning. Staff have a highly impressive depth of knowledge about each individual child. For instance, they consistently and skilfully use reflective questions and encourage children to think and recall their previous experiences. These wonderful interactions and children's complete involvement clearly show how much children are learning. For example, children who have been learning about Diwali recreate this story among themselves, asking staff for resources to help them build the bridge and discussing the characters from the story. They work collaboratively and demonstrate their understanding of this story.
• Children learn to be highly independent from an extremely early age. They learn to access their drink cups independently and feed themselves at mealtimes. This is instilled early on and, therefore, becomes natural to children. Older babies receive support to use the low sink for handwashing. Toddlers and pre-school children turn on the tap themselves, helping each other when needed, and wash their hands. Toddlers are encouraged to self-serve their lunch and scrape their plates. Children demonstrate that this is a skill they have already learned and practised.
• Children receive an immense amount of praise and encouragement. This is extremely effective in supporting children's high self-esteem and confidence, especially those children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). Staff work very effectively with parents and other professionals, such as occupational therapists, educational psychologists, paediatricians, speech and language therapists and social workers. This helps to ensure that staff quickly identify and meet children's needs to a very high degree. The management and special educational needs teams target additional funding very effectively to directly maximise the benefit for children.
• A key focus is to promote children's emotional literacy and security. This is built on slowly from the earliest age. Staff talk to babies about feeling happy and sad. Younger children have mirrors to learn to recognise facial expressions. Older children learn to express and discuss their feelings. Staff give them time to recognise and understand what they are feeling and how their behaviour relates to those feelings. They talk about how their actions can make others feel. Consequently, children demonstrate a mature awareness of their friends' feelings and of their own behaviours.
• The leadership team has a thorough oversight of the nursery. It works with staff to empower them to recognise successful learning opportunities and to reflect and improve on anything they feel could have gone better. The long-serving and dedicated staff team reports that there is an exceptional team ethos, where staff receive endless support for their development and well-being. Staff comment that they feel listened to and that the extremely high levels of training on offer enable them to feel completely valued. They comment they are incredibly happy in their roles and find their work very rewarding.
• Parents are overwhelmingly complimentary about all staff. They say that staff have created a 'lovely community'. Parents report that the many methods of communication used by leaders and staff promote outstanding parent partnerships. Parents have high levels of confidence in the staff and know their children's learning is supporting their next stage of development.